Burgundy red wines: Representation of potential for aging

This study was conducted to investigate wine professionals’ perception of aging potential of red wines. In the first experiment, 41 wine professionals assessed sixteen commercial Burgundy red wines via a binary categorization task, an aging potential rating task, and a hedonic rating task and an analytic sensory evaluation including an astringency and a bitterness rating task. The wines were also analyzed by High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography with a UV Detector (HPLC-UV) and their color was evaluated using Hue (H∗), Lightness (L∗) and Chroma (C∗) measurements. Results showed that the wines were split into two clusters on the basis of aging potential judgements indicating that the wine professionals had a collective representation of the characteristics of a wine with a potential for aging. Wines with a potential for aging were characterized by low L∗ and H∗ and high C∗ values, a high astringency and a higher concentration of anthocyanins and polyphenol. In a second experiment, 34 wine professionals performed three potential for aging binary sorting task based on (1) visual assessment only, (2) olfacto-gustatory assessment only and (3) overall assessment (visual plus in-mouth). Results showed that the sensory modalities tested were complementary and that visual or olfacto-gustatory assessments alone were not sufficient to explain overall judgments of aging potential.